The Creationists Come to Ireland in Force

"We reflect, in a small part of the exhibition, that the Causeway played a role in the historic debate about the formation of the earth, and that for some people this debate continues today."

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Oh, holy mother of god, give it a rest, please?

Granted, the Republic itself has its problems with the legacy of nutball authoritarian Catholicism (I just love linking to that speech), but the fact that creationist nonsense has come to be established in the counties of the North should surprise approximately nobody. There has been a long and deep connection between the Christianist wingnuts on this side of the pond, and their Orange counterparts over there. I remember vividly being in D.C. the night before Ronald Reagan's inauguration, and buying drinks for some poor functionary from the Irish embassy who'd discovered only late that afternoon that some South Carolina congresscritter had invited Rev. Ian Paisley to the inauguration. This is exactly the same as if Barack Obama had invited Louis Farrakhan to sit on the dais with him, except that Paisley had real power and used it to foment actual violence. The Paisley family always were beloved figures at places like Bob Jones University, back when it was still permissable for Southern conservatives to call the pope the whore of Babylon. Now, of course, everyone's together on the war on ladyparts and the protection of the Jesus snowflake zygotes. Minor theological differences — of a kind that killed hundreds of thousands of people down through the years in Europe — don't count for much against re-electing, say, Jim DeMint. Progress, ain't it grand?